Originally I've been leaving my products open to derivation (even zero change) and providing most textures publicly to minimalise theft, at least for those people who steal out of laziness. Now though, through a imvu link that allows you to view and download a product's mesh and textures, people are getting the textures I've chosen not to share and transferring them to other products! The worst part is that I have given them the plain baked textures that they can overlay their own stuff on but they have decided to take my ones instead.

The only worry for me is that these images cannot be shared because I'm the one who bought rights to it/I can't distribute them in a unedited form. Technically I don't think they will come after me, so I'm not sure if I have to take on the responsibility for this.

What is the best thing I should do in this case to discourage them or at least mitigate it? Stick enitrely to 100% public domain images and my own photos? Or do I need to provide idiot-proof instructions? Complain to imvu about their leaked link(not like they ever cared about this stuff lol)? Does it actually matter if they are taking it?

I don't really understand the bought the rights to pics . . but that doesn't really matter I recon ?

I'm not sure it's laziness or they even know what they are doing because I'm guessing someone is selling them your stuff as theirs .
So like they never even see your page and are clueless to what is actually happening and/or don't really know how to create .
The only thing you can do is if you find your stolen works to write to them requesting to remove it and why or what is happening .
That way you may get a better idea of what is actually happening in each individual case . Ff they don't respond and remove it then
write to IMVU staff help ticket and demand they remove the stolen products as I believe that is against the TOS ( terms of service ) .

There is nothing you can do do prevent it. You can make it harder for the amateurs but the pros can rip anything.

Pretty much anything a graphics card has to render can be ripped. Was these file rippers that put me and many others out of business in Second Life.

You are in an unfortunate situation when it comes to enforcement. As you are just a licensee and not the owner you can't DMCA.
what you could do is contact who has ownership and report the theft to them and have them DMCA the thieves. If they are also ripping your icons you can DMCA them on that issue alone.

That said, DMCA one, ten more will pop up in their place. Eventually your days end up just being about DMCAs vs making new content.

Only real recourse I've found is to create brand loyalty. Build your brand up so the customer wants to buy from the real deal. I know its a tough task in today's IMVU but that's the only thing I've found that works.

There is nothing you can do do prevent it. You can make it harder for the amateurs but the pros can rip anything.

Pretty much anything a graphics card has to render can be ripped. Was these file rippers that put me and many others out of business in Second Life.

You are in an unfortunate situation when it comes to enforcement. As you are just a licensee and not the owner you can't DMCA.
what you could do is contact who has ownership and report the theft to them and have them DMCA the thieves. If they are also ripping your icons you can DMCA them on that issue alone.

That said, DMCA one, ten more will pop up in their place. Eventually your days end up just being about DMCAs vs making new content.

Only real recourse I've found is to create brand loyalty. Build your brand up so the customer wants to buy from the real deal. I know its a tough task in today's IMVU but that's the only thing I've found that works.

Thanks for the advice, that's really helpful. I've accepted the fact that I can't really stop thieves, I just want to find a way to present them with a option so easy that they don't do it so often (which is 50% of them haha). I am also aware that skilled thieves can get away with it, especially when they mash together multiple stolen images. Also imvu's website is so ancient you don't even need to go to the effort of ripping from the graphics card, when their application is leaking the data itself.

I didn't consider brand loyalty though, that is a good idea. Especially if it means that buyers will recognise a stolen product because they know the original dev. I will probably put more effort into branding and see how that goes.

I'm also curious about thief culture itself. I''ve seen the imvu community cross over to others like the sims modding, and many think that they can take textures because the mods themselves are free. Then they start taking things across from imvu into sims and sims into imvu and causing all kinds of mayhem. Almost funny if your products weren't at risk of theft.

Last edited by Quantum on Tue Mar 21, 2017 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't really understand the bought the rights to pics . . but that doesn't really matter I recon ?

I'm not sure it's laziness or they even know what they are doing because I'm guessing someone is selling them your stuff as theirs .
So like they never even see your page and are clueless to what is actually happening and/or don't really know how to create .
The only thing you can do is if you find your stolen works to write to them requesting to remove it and why or what is happening .
That way you may get a better idea of what is actually happening in each individual case . Ff they don't respond and remove it then
write to IMVU staff help ticket and demand they remove the stolen products as I believe that is against the TOS ( terms of service ) .

Yeah I try to talk to them and encourage them to get images legally (cause it's so easy) but I don't get a response usually. I haven't found a strong need to report anyone yet, because most people just do zero-change derive with is ok. Hope that stays that way.